Slitherine

First up, thank you very much for the invitation to be part of Panzer Corps beta testing. I'm a long time fan of the series and very much want this latest iteration to be a success both for the legacy and in it's own right.

Ok, down to business.


*****

We are very interested to hear your first impressions of the game. What were your impression after 30 seconds, 5 minutes, 15 minutes and an hour. If you could write these down and post them to the forum it would be very useful.

30 secs
I started the game up and it loaded nice and fast without any technical issues. There was no intro movie or real presentation, which struck me as putting me into the game too fast. The initial screen menu is well presented but I found the campaigns and scenarios to suffer from the lack of introduction which doesn’t help immersion.
PG had a brief explanatory text so you could have an idea what the scenario is about, and the campaign path had an introduction voice over. I think a non-cheesy voiceover, with accompanying text, and perhaps a historical map with moving arrows or historical clip would set the tone for each scenario.
The text could focus on the military, economic and political strategic situation, and give a good idea of what type of scenario is about. This way you could tell very quickly if the odds are for or against the Germans, is it offensive/defensive, fast moving/slugging match, involving sea units etc… Also it could be a good idea to use key words to sort by. This could allow a player to choose between just the scenarios with sea battles, for example.

5 minutes
Played the tutorial and got into the swing of massed attacks, which I like a lot. I like having to build units up to strength between scenarios and the relatively cheap upgrade based on paying just the difference in cost.

15 minutes
I miss being able to minimize the screen, although alt-tab is stable. Moved units don’t display this state and so they can be accidentally reselected. Recon units need to be carefully moved, which given their role, is not a bad thing at all. It would be quite nice to have a bit of historical information available for each type of equipment.
Saving the game brings up a windows browse box but I think a Panzer Corps layout would be less immersive breaking.

1 hour
The tutorial infantry are stronger than the campaign troops. I was surprised by the defence values of infantry and aircraft being so high, although in game they function well. Playing the 1939 campaign on normal difficulty was too easy and so I restarted on hard difficulty. I still had plenty of prestige to spare going into Norway.
I really like trains! Great way to move troops quickly. I also like the PG2 division of unit actions, it is of course much user friendlier than the PG1 method.
I also like enemy garrisons sallying out of non-objective cities to attack vulnerable attacking units. That said, I suspect a cunning player could entice the AI with say a cheap towed anti-tank that continually gets raw recruit replacements.

Performance. Is the game too slow on your PC? If yes, what problems exactly you experience, and what system configuration do you have?

No performance issues, no significant loading time waits. My laptop specs are:

Windows Vista Home Premium
Service Pack 2

Acer Aspire 6920
Intel Core Duo CPU T8100 @ 2.10GHz
4 GB DDR2 RAM
32-bit OS

Nvidia GeForce 9500m GS 512MB
16” LCD
Inbuilt sound

Map graphics: the terrain map and the units. What did you like or not like. What could be improved? Can you see enough of the map, are the images too big/too small?

The maps are pretty good. Going by just Poland and Norway they’re easy to traverse particularly for aircraft. I noticed some glitches in Norway where the river flowed into the sea. Also when I loaded the Sea Lion scenario a south east British city didn’t show.
I noticed that if just a small part of the hex was just visible on the screen the computer would conclude that there’s no need to zoom to the combat, and so some unseen AI initiated battle would rage somewhere almost off the screen.
Pressing F brought up the full screen which was very nice. If I could remember the hot-keys I’d like to stay on that mode, not much chance with my sieve of a head.
The Polish & Norwegian AD are too large, they spill across into neighbouring hexes. Also the same deal with paratroop transports.
I think it could be a good idea to have a carriage with the train icon as the locomotive is not such a familiar shape to the modern eye. Then again, doing so might make it too small compared to the other icons.

Usability and UI of the main screen. Is it intuitively clear how to control the game? Is the UI convenient? Do you like the existing mouse interface, or would you prefer a different one? What useful information do you miss in the UI sidebar or the main map view?

The UI is clear enough. Tool tips on weather is well documented, in fact tool tips everywhere is welcome in my book. I understand why the mouse button click as they do, but count me a fan of clicking the ground/air toggle like PG series.
In the side bar I’d really like to see exact unit experience when I hover over the unit stars.
Also I noted that the aircraft shadow covered the red star bar beneath the icon in the deploy menu.
Given its importance, I’d really like easily accessible information on what suppression a unit is under.

Game rules. Please note that at this point game rules are not final. We are still thinking about some aspects, and we'll change and tweak some things as we test the game. However, any opinions on what you see in the game now, and what could be improved, are very much welcome.

I’m working on my notes about unit pricing. Yet to be completed.
I would say that I very much like that auxiliary units can’t be replaced when killed. A nice decision that adds to the game.

Random Notes:

• I can’t access the unit experience detail apart from the number of stars. I know this feature is coming.
• Clicking on the log I can hardly see the blue text on grey.
• For some reason I can see some AI units on the AI turn in Poland. I think they flash when the AI makes a purchase. These units should be well out of sight but they flashed up before disappearing when back to my turn.
• From a scenario I noticed the FW190A & FW190D have swapped stats.
• Polish artillery did not fire on me even though it was the logical thing to do, they seem to be completing their actions too early in the turn.
• There was a paralyzed Polish aircraft at the eastern airfield waiting to be destroyed. I agree with the idea of holding back to pounce when the time is ripe, but this behaviour was unproductive.
• Polish anti-tank got their sequencing all wrong. My armour was bombarded for serious suppression and a small AT force attacked me, driving my near full strength but suppressed armour into another Polish AT. This AT did not however get in a free (and probably devastating) shot as it appears to have acted beforehand.

*****

As mentioned, my next task is going to be assessing unit real value to me the player, and the unit pricing.

Hey GenWagner, welcome to the forum! Thanks for feedback. Some responses to your comments.

GenWagner wrote: I started the game up and it loaded nice and fast without any technical issues. There was no intro movie or real presentation, which struck me as putting me into the game too fast. The initial screen menu is well presented but I found the campaigns and scenarios to suffer from the lack of introduction which doesn’t help immersion.

Agreed, intro movie will hopefully be added, and campaign/scenario selection will be definitely improved. I'm afraid no voiceover though, I would love to have that too, but it will be a big pain to translate to all languages we'll have to support...

GenWagner wrote: Played the tutorial and got into the swing of massed attacks, which I like a lot. I like having to build units up to strength between scenarios and the relatively cheap upgrade based on paying just the difference in cost.

Cheap upgrades should only work when you upgrade within the same series (like Bf109 -> Bf109 or PzIII -> PzIII), but I think eqp table does not have all the required info setup yet.

GenWagner wrote: I miss being able to minimize the screen, although alt-tab is stable. Moved units don’t display this state and so they can be accidentally reselected. Recon units need to be carefully moved, which given their role, is not a bad thing at all. It would be quite nice to have a bit of historical information available for each type of equipment.

Some information will be included in the Library, and when we do that, Purchase screen will include direct links to Library pages.

GenWagner wrote: Saving the game brings up a windows browse box but I think a Panzer Corps layout would be less immersive breaking.

Indeed, will improve if have enough time.

GenWagner wrote: The tutorial infantry are stronger than the campaign troops.

Rather enemy infantry in tutorial ("Wehrmacht reserve") is weaker than your own troops.

GenWagner wrote: Pressing F brought up the full screen which was very nice. If I could remember the hot-keys I’d like to stay on that mode, not much chance with my sieve of a head.

I'm thinking about a small icon in the bottom-right corner of the map, to toggle fullscreen on/off.

GenWagner wrote: The Polish & Norwegian AD are too large, they spill across into neighbouring hexes. Also the same deal with paratroop transports.

This is intentional, to stress the big size of some units (like Maus for example). Not sure it is the right thing for Norwegian AAs though...

GenWagner wrote: I think it could be a good idea to have a carriage with the train icon as the locomotive is not such a familiar shape to the modern eye. Then again, doing so might make it too small compared to the other icons.

Yep, that is the reason why we decided to do without the carriage.

GenWagner wrote: The UI is clear enough. Tool tips on weather is well documented, in fact tool tips everywhere is welcome in my book. I understand why the mouse button click as they do, but count me a fan of clicking the ground/air toggle like PG series.

Hmm... maybe add an option for that? Many people seem to have problems with new system...

GenWagner wrote: • Clicking on the log I can hardly see the blue text on grey.

Interesting, probably a monitor-specific issue.

GenWagner wrote: • For some reason I can see some AI units on the AI turn in Poland. I think they flash when the AI makes a purchase. These units should be well out of sight but they flashed up before disappearing when back to my turn.

Wow! Anybody else had this problem?

Rudankort wrote: • For some reason I can see some AI units on the AI turn in Poland. I think they flash when the AI makes a purchase. These units should be well out of sight but they flashed up before disappearing when back to my turn.
Wow! Anybody else had this problem?

I assumed you (Dev Team) already knew about this problem. Apparently I was wrong.

It's actually existed since the change to the appearance of fog, that update, which I believe was two beta versions ago.
The patch that changed the game from
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/8063/smoke1z.jpg
to
http://img189.imageshack.us/i/endio.jpg/

Be that as it may, I'll make you a proper report on this item. (It's not caused by new AI purchases, but it could be related)

Kerensky wrote: I assumed you already knew about this problem. Apparently I was wrong.

It's actually existed since the change to the appearance of fog, that update, which I believe was two beta versions ago.

Even more interesting, because I don't think I changed anything related to which units are visible and which are not. FoW was a cosmetic change really, and it did not touch game engine. Anyway, I'll investigate this.

I for one have a hard time reading the red and blue on the combat log.

Make the font wider. That should work until we get a color blind person to test the game.

Rudankort wrote:Even more interesting, because I don't think I changed anything related to which units are visible and which are not. FoW was a cosmetic change really, and it did not touch game engine. Anyway, I'll investigate this.

Report's up, #45, hopefully will help jump start your investigation.
The details on page 9, not the single line of text on page 1.

Kerensky wrote:Report's up, #45, hopefully will help jump start your investigation.
The details on page 9, not the single line of text on page 1.

Don't worry, by now I have figured out the structure of your bug thread.

I was going to get into unit values, but reading other posts I feel this is being worked on and so better I concentrate elsewhere.

So I will focus on the campaign feel.

Poland was a fine map with some flanking movements and a rude awakening here and there. Lost a core unit to concentrated counter-attack, but it was a bit sloppy of me so fair's fair. Overall fine, a bit easy but Poland was ill prepared for the German juggernaut, and it's a first scenario.

I restarted Norway after getting my navy thrashed... Quite good naval battle but the Allies should have carried on doing what they started doing, hunting out the Kriegsmarine and sending them to the bottom of the sea. Don't let the Royal Navy get distracted by bombarding land targets, only do that after not finding any German fleet. The land battle was a series of bottlenecks after Oslo and I managed a minor. Please drop the prestige for killing the British ships, I finished the scenario with 5000 prestige!

Just started Low Countries and boy, this is the best of the bunch so far! The British, French, and even the Belgians are giving me heaps - love the 'Gembloux Gap' armoured battle. Lost armour there but won the exchange. I don't think Gamelin was too far wrong in thinking the Ardennes was not tank country, 2 French infantry held up my column while the French air force strafed my columns.
I really like seeing (and this is where the fair-to-player-as-to-AI philosophy kicks in) the Allies run out of prestige! It happened around turn 4 and this is just as the battles rage all up and down the front and there is ebb and flow, and now suddenly the Allies have run out of steam and I'm going to leap for the throat and crush strength 3 units near the front.
The BEF took terrible losses by moving up their troops in half tracks, this is something we should change as British infantry have good defensive stats and bombing half-tracks is just too easy by comparison.

Oh, also sometimes I have issues scrolling, the screen is a bit sluggish in responding. Could be my machine though...

I'll be adding more.

Oh dear, Low Countries ended on a rather low.

The Allies ran out of prestige alright - the western half of the map was largely deserted!

The fun tough part was round 3s-6 when a series of battles raged from Brussels in the North to Namur in the centre, to Sedan in the south. Having a new front form at Ostend (nth) to Lille (ctr) to say Arras (sth) would put some starch in the scenario.

The southern cities need a unit or two down there, I was able to quickly occupy city after city with firing a shot.

(I played it on Hard, started with 5000p and finished on turn 13 of 25 to end with 4500p).

I think it's ok to have a weak Allied defence in the south once the German break past Sedan, that could excite the history buffs.

Prestige wise we really need to knock off about 2000p from Norway. If done I could upgrade & buy all the units as I did but there would have been about 1000p remaining for replacements. That would have been enough but I the player would have felt a bit of tension as my reserve slipped below 1000, at least until the scenario is decided and the total begins to climb again.

I'm not so keen on the Allies buying anti-tank as the seeming default. Infantry seem a better default and are over-all a better buy. Also the Belgian heavy infantry is a serious heavy-hitter vs armour. It has a hard attack of 6! This means it can go toe to toe with the PzIIIE and do some serious hits.

France:

The map itself is good, the Allies initial deployment is good too, and the battles that rage north of the Seine are of good quality. In places the Allies through back my advances and I could have lost a couple of core units with a bit of bad luck.

However, once the initial Allied positions are breached (I broke the extreme west and east flanks and rolled up the centre) the Map has too much unoccupied space. Going by the Low Countries dialogue, I do not think one deployment can satisfy multiplayer and single player. In multi-player Low Countries favours the Allies but in single-player it is a walkover for the player. France would probably be the same situation.

Afterwards I only had the standard AT & AD massed defence at Paris & Tours to overcome. There were victory objectives without even a garrison! Note, I encountered a strength 0 AD at Paris and the port cities with railroad cause CTD when rail is used.

Prestige is too rampant. I started with 4000p and ended with 8000p after getting a decisive victory on turn 12. I used elite and green replacements through-out and basically spending prestige means nothing to me now. This is on "hard", which is far too easy.

(Btw, it would be nice if I could load a game from the in-game menu rather than quitting to main menu and then loading.)

I have a 17" widescreen Generic PnP Monitor on NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS with 1280 x 768 resolution and the minimap has black bars on the sides.

GenWagner wrote: (Btw, it would be nice if I could load a game from the in-game menu rather than quitting to main menu and then loading.)

Whoomp, there it is!
0:31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V6T0lJc3dU

Also, both your bugs have been reported, but I'll make an addition for your CTD.

Ok let's talk about units:

Poland
- Cavalry are an interesting recon/inf hybrid, but I'm not tempted. The lower defences compared to Wehr Inf and higher cost turn me off.
- Bruckenpioniere, oh dear me... How ever you spin it their attack values are too rotten. I've done LC & France without bridging because there is no way I want to put this useless unit in my core. Higher defence values & a bit of air attack don't mean enough. Add a 210p cost (and in coming beta's I'm sure the prestige situation will settle down to a fine game-balance) and this unit is a trap. With an abundance of prestige I upgraded aux inf in LC to these and never used their bridging ability and could hardly use them except as a speed bump on my flanks. If they had remained Wehr I would have got much better use from them.
- Btw Wehr & Wehr HW, great units. Don't touch them please, I like them fine as is.
- Pioniere, mentioned in detail elsewhere. Far too expensive and beaten hands down in value by Wehr & Wehr HW.
- Gebirgjager, fine enough mountain troops with comparable stats to Wehr. I gave them half tracks and had them skirt along the western coast of Norway, but this proved a mistake as they or the transports couldn't negotiate the mountains. I can see myself upgrading Wehr to Gebirgsjager & vice versa as the scenario demands.
- Trucks, move 8 on roads, vulnerable to any attack, cost a cheap 28p = perfectly fine with me.
- Panzers...
With the amount of prestige floating around I quickly gravitate to PzIIIE & PzIVD. Now in prior PG games these two models covered the anti-infantry & anti-tank needs, however not really any more. Yes the PzIIIE has better ground & air defences, so can better resist artillery & bombers, but in tank engagements the PzIVD has better initiative and hard attack and so can knock off more attacking strength before the Allied armour gets their shots. The difference in prestige is a negligible C. 20p, so to be honest I think the rational player is going to be driven to mainly using PzIVD and the odd PzIIIE. Personally I'd prefer to see something of an even split, but to do that you'd need to play with the initiative values.
Thinking back to PG, the PzIIIG model onwards established this dual dependency so maybe the PzIIIE doesn't need a tweak? However, back in PG the PzIIIG is available from LC whereas currently it appears from England onwards.
- Recon, why would I use the Sdkfz 231 6RAD? For 2p more I get a bit of air attack. There's no decision to be made here which is not going to help bring about a varied core force and therefore re-playability.
- Anti-tank, no need to deploy AT in early campaign. I'd imagine heavy use in MP.
- Artillery, good old trusty 10.5cm at an economical price. The Sturmpanzer is good but a bit overpriced even compared to the 15cm because of that 3 ammo. I fine without SP artillery through to England, and I bought one there just to test it out.
- Anti-Air, haven't used.
- Fighter aircraft, Me BF109E works just fine. A bit expensive but still value for money.
- Bomber aircraft, Ju87B & Me110C are both great - there's a place for both types of unit in my core.
- Strategic bomber aircraft, why oh why is the DO17Z there? For just 21p more you can get the HE111H2 and not have to worry about a meagre 20 fuel. Also the HE111 has better stats across the board. If you bump up the Dornier's fuel and cut the price, the General on a budget might just have a choice to make.

Ok, break time, I'll be back with Norway+

GenWagner wrote:With the amount of prestige floating around I quickly gravitate to PzIIIE & PzIVD. Now in prior PG games these two models covered the anti-infantry & anti-tank needs, however not really any more. Yes the PzIIIE has better ground & air defences, so can better resist artillery & bombers, but in tank engagements the PzIVD has better initiative and hard attack and so can knock off more attacking strength before the Allied armour gets their shots. The difference in prestige is a negligible C. 20p, so to be honest I think the rational player is going to be driven to mainly using PzIVD and the odd PzIIIE. Personally I'd prefer to see something of an even split, but to do that you'd need to play with the initiative values.
Thinking back to PG, the PzIIIG model onwards established this dual dependency so maybe the PzIIIE doesn't need a tweak? However, back in PG the PzIIIG is available from LC whereas currently it appears from England onwards.

Hi General! Some comments.

Initiative for PzIVD, we could call it a bug. Lowered now to 5. Tweak was done on PzIIIF so you have same initiative and hard attack as PzIVD with better defense values.
With appearance of PzIIIG things will look even better. For better use of light tanks early on and for upgrade path PzIVD is switch from Poland to appear in LC where PzIIIF should be in as well. Original plan was to make PzIIIE non purchasable (not in yet) but to show its symbolic presence in Poland. Artefact of old plans. Do not find it important any more but why not to use it when we have it so it is auxiliary unit in Poland now (to boost moral of casual players in first scenario). PzIIIG historically did appear during campaign against French but first batch of some 50 vehicles was done with same 3.7 cm gun as PzIII E and F and they come to front too late to see some real action. Other part of series was made with 5 cm calibre gun and that is the one in this e-file. In general all statistics was made by technical parameters so units are more fairly comparable to each other and among German tanks only couple of improvisations are made to make some better differentiation among them or to have better upgrade path. Prices will have more changes along the way.

Hi Uran!

Thanks for the info on the panzers. Point of trivia, I'm pretty sure it was the PzIIIG 3.7/5cm muck-up that Hitler noticed and did his prune over. He'd bring the topic up for years afterwards.

Back to units - Norway:
- Fallshirmjager, I like that they're fast hitting infantry assault troops that aren't equipped to withstand protracted battle.
- I guess we'll see some differentiation between the currently identical PzIIIE & PzIIIF
- The cross-country capable SdKfz 232 8Rad beats the others hands down. The 3 defence is a bit jarring but it's mobility absolutely make the best recon unit by far.
- I'd like to retouch on the Ju87b, at overstrength and a few bars of experience it is raining 0-7 odds on a lot of soft target types.
- Ju88A, highly effective anti-shipping aircraft and again, add a few stars and overstrength ad by England it was 'one shotting' British capital ships!
- Pzjager IB, cheap, effective, pretty frail. If short on prestige I'm sure a player could use in their core.
- 15cm artillery, if you can afford it's a quality unit.
- Hanomag h/track, value for cost, but it makes a Wehr unit replacements double price. If pressed for prestige I'd expect a player to use these where they really need them.

Low Countries:
- StuGIIIA, haven't yet used, the cheap cost and good ground defence do appeal however. I think a good player could get a lot of value out of this type of unit.
- The Bf110D is a slight upgrade for an already fine fighter/bomber unit.

France:
- nil

England:
- The Bf109f, oh dear this is a trap! The significantly weaker attack means that Spitfires will ignore its "threat" of interception and hit the escorted bombers. I would not have this unit escort any bomber unit of value. I restarted the scenario without 'downgrading' any of my fighters and the trusty Bf109e served me well.
- PzIIIG arrives to a fair welcome. Still lost a unit to concentrated British attack.
- StuGIIIB, has same stats as the IIIA
- nebelwerfer, short range, towed and low ammo. Unless the price is right this type of unit will only see service as an auxiliary.
- Ju87R, good that this unit gets a stretch before the all popular 87D arrives to steal the show.

*****

England Scenario itself:

The Luftwaffe and much of the Kriegsmarine are able to badly hit the Royal Navy in turn 1 and by turn 2 the naval battle was decided. The RAF is numerous and strong and I had to nibble it down over 3-4 turns to the point where I has air superiority. The British strategy is flawed in that I'm able to land units with near impunity once the navy and RAF are nullified. Keeping British armour in the interior just meant I could organise my forces for a set-piece assault which I'm seldom thwarted. The land SE of London is just too easily given up.
I lost some armour to sloppy placement and a recon to no undo. After turn 7 I cruised to an easy decisive victory by the beginning of round 13,